What is Digg?25 Comments
- hisXenocide, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1631. listen to your users.... *cough* kevin rose
- HigherLogic, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10Usability is one of the most important things you can do for your website. Two books that every designer should read are Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug, and Prioritizing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen. Great article too.
- mikehill33, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Excellent article. I LIKE.
- cloud3, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Good read, but he somehow missed Nielsen's ten rules for heuristic evaluation: http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_li ... Although to be fair, there is some overlap with Shneiderman's principles that are included in the list.
- jerbaker, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3One of the biggest problems in interface design isn't even mentioned. I'm surprised they bothered to list complicated maps of where human eyes tend to wander on a page, but they didn't bother to mention the rule concerning color. The rule is to NEVER use color as the sole source of information. I can't tell you how annoying it is that this simple design rule is ignored on a constant basis. We have federal laws requiring that handicapped people have access to everything, but there isn't one regulation to even suggest that products be made accessible to colorblind people even though their numbers are FAR greater than the physically handicapped.
8% of males are colorblind, a little under one percent of females, and older people all have trouble distinguishing some colors. Using colors as the only source of information instantly alienates over 10% of your users.
A perfect example is a battery charger that only has an LED turning from red to green. Colorblind people can't see that. The better ones turn off the LED when the charge is complete, or flash the LED while charging. It doesn't hurt usability for anybody and increases the usability for others. How often is it done? Rarely. - yojiffyskippy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Very good article. Long but still worth reading.
- HonoredMule, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I used to cross many sites that look stupid because they presume a default background color of white while my background defaults to light grey. Then I got a nice, big LCD. So now even more websites look completely like ass, because I specified a sane minimum font size of 14pt and default font size of 16pt. I figure in another 6-8 years, people will start learning how to properly markup a page and implement a design, and that relative units like em exist for a damn bloody good reason.
- gasin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1PS:: thanks for reminding me that wireframes are important from a usability point of view. I would have never thought of that....
- adooga, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Nice and concise, good starter (or refresher).
- Tias, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Brilliant I'm currently working as a student assistant in a User Interface course, and I just have to include this list somehow. It's spot on!
- ivanov, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Agreed - a comprehensive list of useful information.
- mahdaeng, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1FTA: [[A loose principle that a user shouldn’t need to wait more than 2 seconds for certain types of system response, such as application-switching and application launch time.]]
Finally! Correct usage of the word, "loose". - gasin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Woah - another list "compiled" by smashing magazine with the real information coming from other sites. Its like exactly what they have done for Fonts and Illustrations in past...
I mean the lists are all good to have but where is the editorial part of the magazine? On second thoughts, maybe the site should be Smashing Lists or Smashing Compilations!
:) - audendi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I am ashamed that I had not even thought of that! I used to work for govt web development and we had to be 508 compliant, but nobody even mentioned colorblind issues then.
I learned HTML in 7th grade from a teacher who was red-green colorblind, too. - HonoredMule, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Nielson's rules are quite generalized to computing usability, while this article was focused more specifically on website design. Certainly there's overlap, but Shneiderman's principles make a better fit.
- wingman42, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Good List. However, It only scratches the surface of many key usability concepts. But, it shows you some of the things a web designer has to think about when building a site.
- the_snitch, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Good Info. Regarding the "Mystery Meat Navigation", one of the things I do when I'm reading a web page is highlight text. I just do it without even thinking, it's kind of a reflex.
MMN really irks me when hyperlinks appear out of nowhere, and I end up clicking on them. I think its the Wall Street Journal, whereby double-clicking any word in a paragraph brings up a new window with that words definition. Also, Valleywag has a tendency of creating invisible links on keywords such as "Microsoft" and "iPhone", which lead to other stories on their site.
Stop serving me mystery meat! - Tias, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Well, a lot of it is general as well.
- melonhedd, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1How about setting a background-color on your stylesheet, idiots?
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0It's in the Design category, block it then.
- zendegany, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0very information, Really good! Like everytime!
- om3ganet, on 10/10/2007, -7/+4Front page? no comments? Something can't be right!
The list is quite good though, very detailed, and should be kept in mind when designing interfaces for websites. - MightyTonto, on 10/10/2007, -6/+1Try mentioning its about web design. If you had i wouldn't have bothered....
- benroy, on 10/10/2007, -9/+3your mom is a usability issue.
- ggbs, on 10/10/2007, -10/+2My compilation of common usability mistakes
http://www.bootstrike.com/Articles/DesignMistakes/
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